Master Trainer

A. About the Proposed Project:

a. Project Title: Smart Dhan: Financial Literacy Training for Rural Women
in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh

b. Nature of the Project: Pilot Project

c. Duration: 02 months 15 days

d. Target numbers: 01 Project Coordinator who will also perform role of a Master trainer, 3 Master trainers and 35 Women trainers and 167 village-level participants in 13 districts spread across 4 states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Gujarat.

e. Targeted Locations:

4 districts of Gujarat (Dahod, Panchamahal, Mahisagar and Kheda),
3 districts of Madhya Pradesh (Mandsaur, Rajgarh, Ratlam)
3 districts of Rajasthan (Bhilwara, Alwar, Barmer),
3 districts of Haryana (Hisar, Jind, Kaithal)

f. Vision of the Project: This project is based on the vision to have socially and economically empowered women who act as agents of change in their own lives for a more equitable world. The aim is to positively influence the ¬ financial attitudes and of women, increase levels of ¬ financial literacy, enhance access to ¬ financial services and further facilitates inclusion.

g. Overall Objective: The primary objective is to provide comprehensive financial literacy training to empower rural women in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh. By equipping them with essential financial knowledge and skills, we aim to enable them to make informed decisions, effectively manage their finances, and access financial resources for their personal and entrepreneurial pursuits. To begin with, this pilot project intends to develop a cadre of well-trained, 1 Project Coordinator cum Master trainer, 3 Master trainers and 35 women trainers who would be fully equipped to take up large-scale financial literacy programs in these rural locations for increasing the women customer base for the Microfinance company. These 35 women trainers would be training 167 village-level women participants in these 13 districts across 4 states.

h. Some of the Key focused objectives of the Project:

1. To develop a cadre of well-trained Master trainers and women trainers
for increasing the women customer base in these identified districts
for the company.
2. To impart basic financial literacy and awareness amongst rural women in
13 districts of 4 States.
3. To impart knowledge of digital transactions through Fin tech tools.
4. To inform them About Light Finance Private Limited
5. To impart training in Financial Literacy to 167 village women in 13
identified project districts in 4 states.

Program Implementation

Smart Dhan project would be reaching out to rural women belonging to the tribal locations of the three states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh so the focus of Sshrishti Trust would be to hire Master trainers from the identified project districts itself who are well-versed with the local language, tribal dialects, and customs, except the Project coordinator who would be based at Ahmedabad, besides this the Sshrishti Trust HO team would be visiting these locations for Monitoring and Evaluation of the work during the project tenure. Since this is a women-oriented project so we will preferably have all-women’s team.


i. Selection of Master Trainers:

We will conduct a rigorous selection process to identify 01 experienced and qualified master trainer from each state through our known Non-profit network or source the best possible candidates through the NGO job portals like Devnetjobs.org and Indeed. These trainers will possess a strong background in finance, and micro-finance and possess excellent communication and teaching skills. These Master trainers would be preferably fluent in Gujarati/Hindi and other local dialects of these four states. They should definitely have a good smartphone which they have to use for their training with the trainers if required during the group sessions. They would possess a Master’ degree/Graduate in Commerce, Economics, and Microfinance. They will play a pivotal role in delivering the training program effectively.

ii. Training of Master Trainers:

The selected master trainers will undergo an intensive training program conducted by financial experts in collaboration with our organization preferably at the Ahmedabad office of Light micro-finance at the Prahladnagar office. This will be a 2-days TOT for these Master trainers. We would be approaching the best of resource persons available for financial literacy within Ahmedabad through our known network. The resource person would be focusing on the training manual and the module which would be prepared in consultation with the industry experts which the Master trainer will be using for the two weeks of structured intensive training of these 35 trainers. This training will focus on enhancing their knowledge of financial concepts, effective teaching methodologies, and curriculum delivery techniques. Besides that, the training would also focus on the various Fin tech tools/ platforms which rural women need to understand and learn for accessing financial products through technology.

The Master trainers will be training the 35 trainers in the selected 13 districts at the district-based offices of Light Finance. In certain cases, the Master trainers would be traveling to the rural locations within 50 Km of the donor offices for conducting this training within the villages so that the trainers would not have to travel long distances moreover, we could also curb the cost of travel and food. It has been noticed that women usually do not prefer to travel long distances and leave their daily work routine for such training. Mostly they are daily wage workers who do not wish to lose their wages for attending the training so it will be wiser to train them at their convenient time and location without compromising on their wages. These trainers would be women who are college graduates with a commerce background and preferably with experience of Microfinance and working with the SHGs. These women can be either unmarried or married and are looking for an opportunity to kick off their careers.

The Master trainer should possess the following attributes:

• Enjoy working and engaging with others • Have excellent communication and group facilitation skills. • Be ready to learn and revise your own opinions. • Be con¬ dent and willing to use a range of group facilitation techniques. • Be informed about basic entrepreneurship principles, ¬ financial literacy, life skills, and the local job market. • Foster an environment of respect where women feel comfortable to voice their views and concerns. Let the women make mistakes and feel free to talk! • Be enthusiastic about the program and content. • Be non-judgmental, impartial and value diversity. • Accept feedback from the women as a gift. • Have a sense of humor! While the above is not a comprehensive list, it is a great starting point.


iii. Master trainer:

Recruitment: Sourced through non-profit job portals like Devnetjobsindia or Indeed, local NGO network, with the support of Smart Dhan project staff within these 4 selected states. We will have telephonic interviews followed by a face-to-face interview with the candidates at Ahmedabad. They should definitely possess their own bike and also a smartphone. They should be tech- savvy so that they could impart the women the knowledge of the digital transaction. They master trainer should know the local language fluently and should also have good writing skills.

Qualification and Experience: MBA/ M.Com or Masters in Micro-finance with a little bit of work experience or understanding about micro-finance/ non-profits with youth and women.

Roles and responsibilities: Identification of the trainers, formation of the batch of women trainees, training of these potential women trainers, and day-to-day monitoring of the progress. They would document the progress and submit a monthly progress report to the Project Coordinator. They will be directly reporting to the Project coordinator who will be based at Ahmedabad.

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